Marketing Mix ? The 4Ps

A Solutions Approach (if relevant) Sustainability

Answer:

Introduction

ADF Group is the abbreviated form of African Development Funding Group, which was founded originally as an investment company for Africa. In the year 2013, it has planned to expand its business and established its head office at Hong Kong. In the meantime, the operations’ scope transformed in order to include the developing regions, specific advanced markets all across the world, for fully exploiting the international strategies for investment. Since then, the ADF Group evolved into a private equity company and international fund management along with interests spanning Asia, Europe and Africa (Adfgroupltd.com 2018). The purpose of this essay is to analyze the differentiation strategies, competitive advantage and commoditization of the ADF Group. Moreover, the report throws light on the market segmentation part along with the market mix. Lastly, the report highlights the sustainable approaches undertaken by the ADF Group.

Differentiation

ADF Group is a non-profit organization, which is registered and works for protecting the environment and empowering the communities. The Foundation believes in maintaining as well as building a strong partnership with communities at which it operates. The ADF Foundation enriches individual’s lives by implementing improved nutrition and health infrastructures, creating safe and clean places for the children, education and generation of sustainable income sources for the families. The differentiation strategy of the company is to understand the needs of each community. Every community has some specific needs and the ADF Group strives to address those needs by gaining an understanding of those in an impactful way (Nagle, Hogan and Zale 2016). In addition to this, they consider those needs and develop their conservation areas as well.

Competitive Advantage

The company’s competitive advantages emphasize upon their mission and values. The mission statement of the company is to deliver measurable and superior value for all the stakeholders in an effective manner. In addition to this, they undertake all the transactions in order to become the world’s leading creators of job, especially in the developing nations. There competitive advantage is that ADF Group creates financial stability for the technology driven and modernized society along with developed infrastructure as well as a weighting to the developing economies like Africa. In addition to this, they offer out of the box solutions of finance. Their integrity is their bond or connection. They work together in collaboration for implementing and developing effective ideas (Barney 2014).

Commoditization

ADF Group offers full range of services related to the financial consultancy services for the participating Governments, along with specialization in wealth and asset management. The feasibility of the infrastructure projects study services, financial instruments restructuring and project management. The group has allocated around 2% of the direct investment funds to their research as well as innovation initiatives, which helps in improving their competitive edge for the investee concerns and projects. In addition to this, the organization has allocated around 3% of their direct investment funds portfolio for the Growth Equity as well as Venture Capital opportunities (Barin Cruz, Boehe and Ogasavara 2015). These factors carry great risk and their target is on higher returns.

Segmentation

The ADF Group is committed to the participation of international efforts for fighting against terrorist financial and money laundering activities. Being a part of the compliance requirements in several jurisdictions and countries, the organization have implemented and segmented their Anti Money Laundering policies. The control programs are segmented into several activities. This involves verification and identification of the business and customers partners. Moreover, they segment their business partners and customers by monitoring as well as period reviews. Furthermore, they identify and segment their potential money laundering as well as terrorist financial risks by monitoring the investment activities. The identification as well as verification of the Ultimate Beneficial Owners of customers and business partners helps them in analyzing the risks (Kotabe and Helsen 2014).

Marketing Mix

Product: In the case of ADF Group, the products are equivalent to benefits provided for the company’s target audience. In simpler terms, it can be the causes it supports, the programs or projects, the company is developing. In this way, the non-profit organization can have an understanding of what differentiates the organization from others, in terms of beneficiaries (Mix and Brand 2017).

Price: The price will be the necessary funds the organization implements for carrying out the programs or projects as well as the personal costs needed in order to support their cause.

Place: This implies the easiest accessibility of the company’s products to their consumers. The company operates in most of the developing nations, with special focus upon Africa, Europe and Asia.

Promotion: The promotional activity refers to the key communication tools, which the company uses in order to provide necessary information regarding the services or products to various stakeholders or customers. ADF Group uses public relations strategies in order to gain the attention of the target groups. In addition to this, the company is also into Corporate Social Responsibility activities, which comply with all the environmental legislation, relevant for any regional or country level (Borden 2015).

Solutions Approach

The company can undertake certain strategies in order to deliver more valuable services for its partners. These should include asset and wealth management strategies for focusing on the general wealth management services and funding government level infrastructure projects.

Sustainability

The ADF Group can continue to fulfill their mission over the time, by keeping an eye on the needs and demands of the stakeholders, more particularly their supporters and beneficiaries. In simpler term, the financial sustainability of the organization depends upon its ability to access new funds and diversify income (Sullivan-Mort et al. 2017).

Conclusion

To conclude, ADF Group is an international investment organization, with a rapid increasing base of assets. They are strictly committed to the pollution prevention by adopting ongoing projects for identifying as well as controlling the significant environmental impacts that are associated. They protect their environment by striving to minimize and prevent water, land and air pollution. In addition to this, they plan to keep their wastage minimum by disposing the wastes in the most effective as well as eco-friendly manner. Moreover, they make the most efficient use of all resources as well as materials by constantly measuring and evaluating the operations. Furthermore, they regularly communicate with their employees and significant stakeholders regarding the environment performances.

References

Adfgroupltd.com (2018). [online] Available at: https://www.adfgroupltd.com/ [Accessed 30 May 2018].

Barin Cruz, L., Boehe, D.M. and Ogasavara, M.H., 2015. CSR-based differentiation strategy of export firms from developing countries: An exploratory study of the strategy tripod. Business & Society, 54(6), pp.723-762.

Barney, J.B., 2014. Gaining and sustaining competitive advantage. Pearson higher ed.

Borden, N.H., 2015. The concept of the marketing mix. Harvard Business school.

Kotabe, M. and Helsen, K., 2014. Global marketing management.

Mix, M. and Brand, C.B., 2017. Marketing Management.

Nagle, T.T., Hogan, J. and Zale, J., 2016. The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing: New International Edition. Routledge.

Sullivan-Mort, G., Polonsky, M., Kilbourne, W., D'Souza, C. and Hartmann, P., 2017. Introduction to the special issue on sustainability.